Cooking for a large numbers often sends many into a panic; pans of vegetables boiling away, broccoli heads dissolving, greens going brown, potatoes overcooked. This would be natural in any good professional kitchen as well, so we don’t cook every vegetable when somebody orders it.
A professional kitchen would prepare and trim what is required, drop it all into pots of salted, boiling water and when almost cooked, take it out and drop it into large bowls of iced water and allow it to cool before storing it in the refrigerator.
Therefore the vegetables remain green, slightly firm and just undercooked, ready to be reheated for just a minute or so when an order is taken. You can do exactly the same in your own house to avoid getting into a spin!
Extra tip: What I do at home is cook all my vegetables as above first, place them in the fridge and concentrate on the main course – the one that takes the majority of time, without any pressure.
And finally, here is the third course for our June 5th wine evening featuring Fiona Beckett:
Flat iron steak, nettle risotto, beef reduction
Tomorrow, another tip and another course, and I will let you know what Fiona matches with this at the end of the week.
– Paul Heathcote